Kemi Badenoch ‘wants Liz Truss to shut up for a while’
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Tory leader told shadow cabinet last week she wanted predecessor to stop making unhelpful interventions. Kemi Badenoch has told shadow ministers she wants a period of silence from Liz Truss, as the Conservative leader seeks to distance herself from her predecessor’s economic legacy.
Badenoch told the shadow cabinet last week that she wished Truss would stop intervening in British politics after the former prime minister wrote a “cease and desist” letter to Keir Starmer demanding he stop saying she crashed the economy. With the Tory leader hoping to draw a line under the party’s recent political failures, several sources said she had expressed exasperation about Truss’s letter, which one shadow cabinet minister described as “absurd”.
The person said: “Kemi said it would be best if Liz would shut up for a while.” Referring to Truss’s letter to Starmer, they added: “It was absurd. I think she’s gone nuts.”. A second shadow cabinet minister added: “The thrust of it was Liz should stop making unhelpful interventions … that it would be much more helpful if Liz wasn’t as vocal.”.
Badenoch made her comments during a meeting of the shadow cabinet after last Wednesday’s session of prime minister’s questions, according to several people who attended the meeting. With UK borrowing rates surging and economists predicting the government could soon breach its fiscal rules, the Tory leader had tried to use PMQs to highlight the government’s economic difficulties.
